'I defy you to read this book and come away with a mind unchanged' John Jeremiah Sullivan 'Als has a serious claim to be regarded as the next James Baldwin' Observer 'I see how we are all the same, that none of us are white women or black men; rather, we're a series of mouths, and that every mouth needs filling: with something wet or dry, like love, or unfamiliar and savory, like love' White Girls is about, among other things, blackness, queerness, movies, Brooklyn, love (and the loss of love), AIDS, fashion, Basquiat, Capote, philosophy, porn, Louise Brooks and Michael Jackson. Freewheeling and dazzling, tender and true, it is one of the most highly acclaimed essay collections in years. 'A voice that's new, that comes as if from a different room. I defy you to read this book and come away with a mind unchanged' John Jeremiah Sullivan, author of Pulphead 'Effortless, honest and fearless' Rich Benjamin, The New York Times 'Als is one of the most consistently unpredictable and surprising essayists out there, an author who confounds our expectations virtually every time he writes' David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times 'A comprehensive and utterly lovely collection of one of the best writers around' Eugenia Williamson, Boston Globe

White Girls

ALS, Hilton

History

Penguin Books, Ltd.

"This book will change you." --Chicago Tribune White Girls is about, among other things, blackness, queerness, movies, Brooklyn, love (and the loss of love), AIDS, fashion, Basquiat, Capote, philosophy, porn, Eminem, Louise Brooks, and Michael Jackson. Freewheeling and dazzling, tender and true, it is one of the most daring and provocative books of recent years, an invaluable guide to the culture of our time.

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

Penguin??Books

Daring and brilliant, this memoir, psychological study, sociopolitical manifesto, and incisive adventure in literary criticism offers a series of portraits analyzing the role that sexual and racial identity has played in the lives and work of the writer's subjects.

The Women

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Farrar. Straus & Giroux

A New York Times Notable Book
Daring and fiercely original, The Women is at once a memoir, a psychological study, a sociopolitical manifesto, and an incisive adventure in literary criticism. It is conceived as a series of portraits analyzing the role that sexual and racial identity played in the lives and work of the writer's subjects: his mother, a self-described "Negress," who would not be defined by the limitations of race and gender; the mother of Malcolm X, whose mixed-race background and eventual descent into madness contributed to her son's misogyny and racism; brilliant, Harvard-educated Dorothy Dean, who rarely identified with other blacks or women, but deeply empathized with white gay men; and the late Owen Dodson, a poet and dramatist who was female-identified and who played an important role in the author's own social and intellectual formation.
Hilton Als submits both racial and sexual stereotypes to his inimitable scrutiny with relentless humor and sympathy. The results are exhilarating. The Women is that rarest of books: a memorable work of self-investigation that creates a form of all its own.

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

The Pulitzer–Prize winning and Guggenheim-honored Hilton Als curates the best essays from hundreds of magazines, journals, and websites, bringing “the fierce style of street reading and the formal tradition of critical inquiry, reads culture, race, and gender” (New York Times) to the task. “The essay, like love, like life, is indefinable, but you know an essay when you see it, and you know a great one when you feel it, because it is concentrated life,” writes Hilton Als in his introduction. Expertly guided by Als’s instinct and intellect, The Best American Essays 2018 showcases great essays as well as irresistibly eclectic ones. Go undercover in North Korea, delve into the question of race in the novels of William Faulkner, hang out in the 1970s New York music scene, and take a family road trip cum art pilgrimage. These experiences and more immersive slices of concentrated life await.

The Best American Essays 2018

United States

Mariner Books

Our Town: Images and Stories from the Museum of the City of New York

Americas

Harry N. Abrams

In this brilliant two-part memoir, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Hilton Als distills into one cocktail the deep and potent complexities of love and of loss, of Prince and of power, of desire and of race. It's delicious and it's got the kick of a mule, especially as Als swirls into his mix the downtown queer nightclub scene, the AIDS crisis, Prince's ass in his tight little pants, an ill-fated peach pie, Dorothy Parker, and his desire for true love. Always surprising and stealthily--even painfully--moving, Als plumbs longing: "I inched closer to him as he danced to you, Prince. But already he was you, Prince, in my mind. He had the same coloring, and the same loneliness I wanted to fill with my admiration. I couldn't love him enough. We were colored boys together. There is not enough of that in the world, Prince--but you know that. Still, when other people see that kind of fraternity they want to kill it. But we were so committed to each other, we never could work out what that violence meant. There was so much love between us. Why didn't anyone want us to share it?"

My Pinup

Arts & Literature

New Directions

One of the leading artists of her generation, Lorna Simpson (born 1960) came to prominence in the mid-1980s through her photographic and textual works that challenged conventional attitudes toward race, gender and cultural memory with a potent mixture of formal elegance and conceptual rigor. Published on the occasion of her 2013 exhibition at Aspen Art Museum, Lorna Simpson: Works on Paper highlights four recent bodies of work on paper that explore the complex relationship between the photographic archive and processes of self-fashioning, including a new group of works being developed during her time as the AAM’s 2013 Jane and Marc Nathanson Distinguished Artist in Residence. As in Simpson’s earlier works, these new drawings and collages take the African-American woman as a point of departure, continuing her longstanding examination of the ways that gender and culture shape the experience of life in our contemporary multiracial society. This beautifully illustrated catalogue features new scholarship by New Yorker staff writer Hilton Als, MoMA Chief Curator of Drawings, Connie Butler, LACMA Chief Curator of Contemporary Art, Franklin Sirmans, and the AAM’s Nancy and Bob Magoon CEO and Director, Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson.

Lorna Simpson: Works on Paper (ASPEN ART PRESS)

Arts & Photography

Sirmans, Franklin

Butler, Connie

Zuckerman Jacobson, Heidi

Smith, Anna Deveare

Aspen Art Press

White Girls, Hilton Als' first book since The Women 14 years ago, finds one of The New Yorker's boldest cultural critics deftly weaving together his brilliant analyses of literature, art, and music with fearless insights on race, gender, and history. The result is an extraordinary, complex portrait of "white girls", as Als dubs the main expansive but precise category that encompasses figures as diverse as Truman Capote and Louise Brooks, Malcolm X and Flannery O'Connor. In pieces that hairpin between critique and meditation, fiction and nonfiction, high culture and low, the theoretical and the deeply personal, Als presents a stunning portrait of a writer by way of his subjects, and an invaluable guide to the culture of our time.

Audible Studios on Brilliance Audio

Explore Frank Walter's relationship to Antigua through a range of works and writings that express his intimate connection to Caribbean nature, landscape, and place. "Nothing seems to be reworked--it is as if each piece drew or painted itself without being adjusted, revised, or fussed over." --Hyperallergic &nbsp; Influenced by his studies of agriculture and the sugar industry in the former British colony of Antigua as well as in England, Scotland, and West Germany, Walter created work inspired by his thoughts, knowledge, journeys, and surroundings--work that encompassed painting, drawing, writing, sculpture, photography, and sound. His paintings--tender, quiet, and lush--transcend the traditional tourist's view of island life in favor of perspectives that explore how and why we look at where we are. &nbsp; Published on the occasion of the 2022 exhibition at David Zwirner, this catalogue includes an introduction by the show's curator Hilton Als. Barbara Paca, the leading expert on Walter, writes a text detailing her personal experience meeting Walter and being in his presence. An essay by Charlie Porter takes readers on a walk as he muses about Walter's life and the nature depicted in his paintings. Joshua Jelly-Schapiro travels to Antigua to explore the history of the island and Walter's lasting impact there.

By Land, Air, Home, and Sea: The World of Frank Walter

Jelly-Schapiro, Joshua

Paca, Barbara

Porter, Charlie

Walter, Frank

David Zwirner Books

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